


echoes of better days

by arachnistar



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Loss of Identity, Memory Loss, Winter Soldier AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-09-13
Packaged: 2018-02-06 06:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1847224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arachnistar/pseuds/arachnistar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wake up, kill, return to nothing. It’s a cycle she can never remember and it’s all she’s known. That is, until a man in pinstripes appears to disturb her world.   </p>
<p>[A Winter Soldier AU splitting from canon after Love and Monsters]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this lovely [gif-set](http://fredslastjoke.tumblr.com/post/86649785768/au-bad-wolf-winter-soldier) by [fredslastjoke](http://fredslastjoke.tumblr.com/) who graciously gave me permission to write a fic. Thank you!

_“Your soul is able_  
 _Death is all you cradle_  
 _Sleepin' on the nails_  
 _There's nowhere left to fall.”_  
\- “Beat the Devil’s Tattoo” by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

\--

Below there are people jostling for seats, yelling, chatting to their neighbors about insignificant things she knows and cares nothing about. It’s chaos even with men trying to control the crowd and get people where they need to be so the speech can start at the proper time. 14:00 sharp.

Five minutes left.

Up on the roof though, things are still. There is a mild breeze and it blows her hair back as she watches, but otherwise, there is no movement or noise.

Someone steps up to the podium and calls for silence. People settle down, the chattering fading to a respectful quiet, and look to the stage. Introductions are made.

She shoulders her gun and shifts in her spot. Won’t be long now.

The newly elected Prime Minister appears to a surge of applause and cheers. He waves to them, big smile plastered on his face. He is the victor for just one glorious moment.

She centers her crosshairs on him and pulls the trigger.

The bullet tears through his skull and comes out the other end, spattering red across the stage. The audience screams, stands, pushes at one another in their haste to get away. Meanwhile, bodyguards shout to one another, point at the rooftops from where the shot came, make calls to various lines.

She takes a grenade – this will keep them busy – and tosses it in the direction of the stage. There is an explosion and more screaming, but her back is already turned. B the time they get to the rooftop, there is no trace of the killer save her destruction.

\--

They call her Bad Wolf.

Most don’t believe she exists and the few who do know that she is impossible to track down. She appears only when she is about to destroy and then she disappears without a single trace. Some think she’s a ghost, a phantom. Some know better.

Whatever she is, they know she never fails and where she arrives there is sure to be death and suffering.

\--

She wakes in a chamber, opens her eyes to see one of her masters standing by. She does not know his name, does not know any of their names because she does not need to. She knows only her own.

Bad Wolf.

She also knows how to follow orders; it is what she is.

It is all she is. The perfect soldier.

“This man.” He shows her an image of a skinny man in a brown pinstripe suit. Wholly unthreatening by the look of him, but then looks can be deceiving (she is, after all, the prime example of the phrase).

“We need him wiped out. Make it fast and simple. He’ll be somewhere in London, possibly by a blue box.” He pauses, runs a serpentine tongue across his lips to moisten them. “You’ll need to shoot him multiple times to make sure he doesn’t get back up. Understood?”

She nods once – an order is an order and a mission is a mission and this is what she does – and leaves immediately.

\--

She strides through the streets, her weapons all tucked away out of sight. It’s easy for her to flow through the foot traffic, as if she doesn’t really belong (she doesn’t), as if she doesn’t even exist. There have been many men in suits among the crowd, but none pinstriped. No blue boxes either.

She stops. Someone behind her bumps her, an annoyed “Oi” at her sudden stop, but then the hustle parts to allow her transgression, flowing around. Her target stands ahead at the street corner, unaware, as he waits for the light to change.

He appears unarmed (and familiar – she ignores that twitch because of course he isn’t _familiar,_ Bad Wolf knows no one but her masters), but with a coat like that, it’s hard to tell. Still, she’ll manage to hit him long before he notices her, let alone draws his own weapon.

One hand drops to a small handgun tucked in the waistband of her jeans. As her fingers wrap around the gun, the crowd parts and he turns his head. His eyes widen, not from fear but from something else she can’t identify.    

“Rose?!”

She blinks and stares at the target.

_Rose?_

The word (the flower, no, the name, a name) resonates through her, alights upon unused synapses, curls in the dusty, forgotten spaces of her mind like incense. It’s followed by a rush of emotions – unfamiliar and messy and strange and yet oddly comfortable, like they belong, like that name (but she doesn’t know any Roses, maybe someone behind her? – but then why all this? what the fuck is going on?).

The target – pinstripes and time and applegrass and paper crowns at Christmas and – no that needs to stop, it hurts and this is wrong and he is the target, nothing more, he is a dead man walking – but the target, he smiles now and it’s a nice –

She focuses on him and tries to brush aside other distracting thoughts.

(She doesn’t have distracting thoughts. Ever. It’s part of the of the perfect hunter package.)

One shot is all it takes.

Multiple shots, she remembers, her masters said she needed to shoot him multiple times to make sure he didn’t get up again.

He has started moving forwards, still talking, “Rose! I’m going to help you, I promise. You just need to – “

She never finds out what he thinks she needs to do because she chooses that moment to raise her gun and fire. The bullet passes through the edge of his coat and pings against the car behind him. People around them are screaming, turning away from the source, but he has gone absolutely still. Like a marble statue in Rome.

(Rome? Why Rome? What is Rome? What is Rose? No, that’s not right. Who is Rose? That’s it – no, no, no, none of that matters. What _matters_ is that she fucking missed.)  

They stare at each other as people shove past and run and generally panic like fools (she isn’t there for them) and she still can’t believe it – she never misses, not once, not that she can pinpoint every shot she’s ever taken, this could be the first for all her memory, but she feels it, knows it isn’t, and she never fucking misses and – is that anger?

No, she doesn’t feel, being the best hunter means nothing, being nothing, a ghost, and ghosts don’t feel things like that and she’s not angry she missed (happy? maybe but no, she shouldn’t be happy either, it makes less sense than anger, she is no more happy than she is angry) –

Sirens go off and she jerks to attention. She could take them all down, but it would draw too much attention and her masters can’t have that…

Another time then.

She takes one last look at the pinstriped man. He’s pushing through the crowd and running towards her, calling after, using that name. But she’s faster and she keeps running, feet pounding against the pavement until he’s lost to the crowd behind.

For some inexplicable reason, her hand feels empty as she runs.

She draws another gun, tries to fill the space with cold metal, but it doesn’t feel quite right.

\--

“You missed.” He rants at her, serpentine tongue flicking out in anger. “This is unacceptable. You had one mission and you failed. It’ll be too late now. We’ll need to get him later, if he’s stupid enough to show for the finale.”

She takes it all, stands there and lets his words hit her in a steady barrage. She isn’t really listening, can’t with the mantra currently running through her mind.

Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose – damn it, why can’t she get that name out of her head?

Because it means something.

It doesn’t. It shouldn’t.

Except it feels… right?

She doesn’t have much time to examine those feelings before her master is nodding at the bulkier soldiers by his side. “Put her in the chair.”

They grab her arms and tug her to it, strap her in, and she lets them (even though she could take them all down – even though she should – wait, no, that’s not right, they are her masters, the prime directive is keeping them safe, it is tattooed into her head more than any other order, more than any other thought – KEEP THEM SAFE, all big and flashy like neon signs in Vegas).

Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose – and that man. The one in pinstripes that she failed to kill.

She can’t put a name to his face but she _knew_ him and he _knew_ her, the her before this and she wants to say that, ask about that ( _was I someone once? was I…?_ ) and maybe she opens her mouth, she thinks the words slipped past, something certainly did –

But then everything is painful, burning, searing, screaming –

Rose, is that –

Nothing once more.

\--

There is a peace to nothingness.

It’s a little like floating in amniotic fluid, this type of nothingness, a surround-sound experience lacking sound or anything else. There are no ripples to disturb the serenity, just a deep stillness to everything as if someone scooped out space and time and matter and energy and thought so all that’s left is void.

Nothing hurts. Nothing aches. Nothing confuses.

Nothing is bad. Nothing is good.

Nothing is everything.

For a little while anyway.

\--

She stands on a large ship high above Earth in a circular room. There are no windows here, just harsh fluorescent lights shining off metal surfaces and shelves of weaponry.

Her mission: protect the ship from potential troublemakers who may interfere with her masters’ plans.

So far, there’s been nothing but her masters warned her that someone was bound to show so stay alert. She has already made three rounds through the entire ship without seeing any intruders, but she remains patient and vigilant as always.

The door slides open and her body jerks to attention. A man wearing pinstripes strolls in as if he owns the place. He doesn’t appear particularly dangerous. Skinny, could be carrying concealed weaponry, nothing drawn as of yet except a thin, silver object with a glowing blue tip (sonic screwdriver – where did that come from? but she knows it isn’t a weapon, can’t kill at the flick of a switch though it can be dangerous in other ways).

But the eyes, those eyes _are_ dangerous, tempestuous and glowing with fury, a forest fire waiting to consume, the sort of rage that has watched empires crumble and burn. They land on her and soften.

She does not understand.

But she doesn’t need to understand to kill.

She draws her gun and aims. One shot and he’ll fall like any other.

“Rose!”

That word. It’s a name, an important name, but whose name and why does she care anyway – she doesn’t, she is here to defend the ship and the weapon from troublemakers like him – she has heard it before.

She blinks at the unexpected impression of a memory.

More impressions pushing themselves together into the vague shape of a memory. Crowded street corner, men in suits that weren’t the right suit, her handgun out much like right now.

This man, she’s seen him before and he’s said that word, that name, before but she couldn’t remember until now.

Last time he said it she missed.

She can’t do the same again. This is even more important because he’s here to interfere with her masters and she cannot allow that.

She gets ready to pull the trigger, her finger touches the cool metal, and he shakes his head.

“Rose, I know you’re still in there. You need to fight it. I can help.” He is pleading and he still hasn’t drawn any weapon and that confuses the hell out of her because targets aren’t supposed to do that.

And he called her Rose.

Her head burns.

Is she –

No. _No_.

She is Bad Wolf, she is a ghost, she is the silent killer who slips in and completes the mission, she is –

Rose Tyler and chips and running and defending people and hoodies and hands clasped together and adventures and the hum of the universe, a song as ancient as time itself –

He is closer now, hands extended as if approaching a rabid animal (and isn’t she just), voice soft.

“Rose. Do you recognize me? I’m the Doctor.”

The Doctor, just the Doctor, in his blue box traveling space and time with –

As it should be –

Forever –

There is a hum in her head now, deafening, drowning out whatever words this man (once he wore leather, once he asked her if that was a smile, once he –), and everything _hurts_ , worse than being electrocuted and scrubbed until she’s nothing (she is, she is, she is), and everything is crashing through her head and in the center of it all, it’s him, no, it’s her, it’s –

She moves forward and strikes him across the head with her gun because he’s almost close enough to touch her and she just needs everything to freeze. The strike isn’t hard enough to kill (why not?), just enough to make him fall to the ground unconscious.

Everything stops, that swirl of chaotic thought (memory?) dissipates like it wasn’t even there, and for a moment, everything is clear. She stares at his still form, nudges his arm with her boot. She should shoot – and everything starts up again like a crackling, old film reel gone mad.

Why didn’t she kill him? Why isn’t she killing him? Why does she know his hair is soft? Why does he call her Rose? Why does she know it’s a sonic screwdriver and that it does practically everything except wood? What’s happening to her? Why are all these thoughts swarming through her head like angry bees? Why –

He stirs and pushes himself up, shaking, and she is left to stare and wonder how the hell anyone could get up from a hit like that so fast –

He’s not human – Time Lord, two hearts and extra lives like a cat and a bit of an ego to boost – a lot of an ego actually – “you think you’re so impressive” – and maybe he sorta is –

This is not her. This is – well, she’s not sure.

“Who are you?” She means _who are you to me_ , _why do you use that name, why is my head spinning like this_. For added effect, she points the gun at his face because that’s always convincing.

He groans and rubs at his head and then blinks several times as he notices the gun right in front of him.

“Hello.” He sounds annoyingly perky about the whole situation. “You didn’t have to hit me quite so hard.”

“I’m supposed to kill you.” She informs him in a monotone.

So why isn’t she?

Shut it.    

“That’s no fun.” He smiles, big and bright and she has seen this grin before, right before his arms came up and – his face turns serious and the thought flutters away like an errant moth. “Rose, please. I don’t know what they did to you, some kind of deep hypnosis maybe, but –“

“Who are you?” She repeats.

He frowns. “I said, didn’t I? I’m the Doctor.” She shakes her head and he must have recognized what she was truly asking because he adds, “I’m your friend. Best mate actually.”

Friend? Best mate? She is the best at hunting and killing and blowing things up (first time they meet he’s waving a device and then the building explodes), but friendship? She is not the best at that, doesn’t know how to even do that or what it is.

He’s wrong. He has to be.

“Rose…?”

The entire ship jerks and she stumbles (falling down on a grating, laughing and laughing but what’s so funny about falling and –).

Something is off. Something slipped past, something must have been planted somewhere while she was distracted (or maybe before, before this man came to meet her, he seems like the sort to ruin things), she _failed_. She needs to find her masters before the ship falls from the sky.

If it isn’t too late already.

She casts one final look at the man (the Doctor and oh his face is begging her to stay and he’s yelling that name but he is still on the ground and she should shoot but – well she needs to rush, another time) and leaves the room.

She runs through corridors to the navigation deck and sure enough the whole place is a mess. Her masters are not there – oh but then there’s a blue arm and over there violet blood stains – they are there, just not in one piece anymore. The controls are broken and small fires burn throughout the room. She peers around the destruction of the room and wonders what the hell she’s supposed to do now.

There were no orders for this scenario. This scenario, one of failure and death, wasn’t even conceived of.

What do you do when you’ve failed and there’s nothing left?

Outside, through the giant glass window, she can see the Earth. Blue and green and white and –

Somewhere (somewhen, time traveler’s lingo, you get used to it) else she saw this same planet burn. Saw it bathed in orange and yellow. Saw it die. Felt a hand slip into her own –

And now there is a hand taking hers, tugging her away from the massacre, and one word “Run” (plastic mannequins, students, no, aliens, the beginning) and she follows because what else can she do right now, the mission is a failure and her masters are all dead and this feels right (running with this hand in hers, this feels more right than anything else ever has, even following orders) –

She finally looks. It’s him, the Doctor, and this isn’t the first time, they have done this many times before, running and holding hands and being in danger but she can’t tell any specific moment, just a series of impressions of running –

“Doctor?” She tries out his name on her tongue and he glances at her with the largest manic grin she has ever seen, but already the slivers of memory are threatening to fall through the cracks. She doesn’t want to lose them; even though she can’t quite make sense of them, she knows that this is right and they are right.

It’s not like she knows anything at this point, with the prime directive having failed (“defend us to your last breath” and she’s still breathing and they are very much dead), she needs something to do and this is better than the alternatives (better than the prime directive too, she thinks).

Up ahead there is a blue box – The TARDIS, it’s bigger –

They enter and it really is bigger on the inside.

She knew that.

Just like she knew him.

But she’s never met him. But she has. But she hasn’t –

She doesn’t know anything anymore.

He drops her hand once they’re inside and it feels emptier for the loss. As he dashes around the console and flicks switches and presses button, she stands there with her gun, feeling weirder and weirder by the minute.

She belongs but she doesn’t but she does – the thought continues to circle in her head with no resolution. Finally there is a strange groaning-wheezing sound (like nothing she has ever heard before and like home) and he turns to her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She nods and remains silent as he whirls around the kitchen, setting up the kettle, grabbing mugs, and she recognizes this routine. Not in any solid memory – those seem to be further out of reach than these indistinct, fuzzy impressions – but still something familiar. It’s a comforting feeling and she holds it close, as if it could slip away at any moment (it can – everything always does).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for taking so long to update. Hopefully the next chapter will be up sooner though with classes going on, I make no promises.

_“But there’s something missing_  
 _There’s something lost in my head_  
 _Could you help me fix it?_  
 _Could you please come stitch me up?_ ”  
\- “From the Mouth of an Injured Head” by Radical Face

\--

The Doctor leads her to a kitchen (breakfast before adventuring, his fingers slipping into jam jars, tea and biscuits, _laughter_ – she doesn’t know what that is anymore) and tells her to sit. She obeys because she’s not really sure what else to do right now. Her masters are dead; she has no place in this world anymore except…

Well she has him.

She recalls that feeling of rightness while holding his hand and all the messy tangles in her mind that he conjures up. Maybe she can figure it out, root through the fragments and piece them together into something coherent. The most complicated puzzle in the world. Maybe she can be someone else now.

Not Bad Wolf.

Maybe Rose. A new Rose.

“Tea?”

She nods and remains silent as he whirls around the kitchen, setting up the kettle, grabbing mugs, and she recognizes this routine. Not in any solid memory – those seem to be further out of reach than these indistinct, fuzzy impressions – but still something familiar. It’s a comforting feeling and she holds it close, as if it could slip away at any moment (it can – everything always does).

Eventually he sets the tea down in front of her alongside a plate of biscuits. She sniffs at her tea; when is the last time she drank something? Ate something? She knows how to, of course she knows, but she doesn’t remember what it’s like. What it feels like. What it _tastes_ like. All her nutrition came from the time in-between, when she was resting.

She brings the mug up and tilts it, just enough to allow some of the hot liquid to pass through her mouth. It blazes a hot trail down to her stomach and though the liquid stings, it feels utterly fantastic. She takes a larger sip, relishing the bittersweet taste of the tea. A sigh passes through her lips and out of the corner of her eyes, she sees him watching her with a fond smile. It unnerves her a bit; no one’s ever looked at her like that (but this isn’t the first time either).

It’s time to talk, but she doesn’t know what to say. _You ruined my life_ or _Thank you_ or _Explain everything_. Fortunately he speaks first.

“What do you remember?”

“I don’t know.” Everything and nothing, she can’t grasp anything tangible and the intangible sensations and thoughts flop in her mind like slippery fish, always at the edge of something and nothing. She wants to pound it because violence has always been the answer, but she can’t. There’s nothing to hit.

He runs a hand through his hair, tugs at his ear. “Okay, what about the first solid memory? What about that?”

She can do that. She focuses on her memories, the _real_ ones (not that they aren’t all real, probably, just that these feel like stone while the others are smoke), and begins speaking, “I woke up on the ship. My mission was to protect it – Wait, no…” Her brow furrows and she frowns because there was another time. Something before. “I saw you before the ship. I saw you in the street. I was supposed to kill you, but I missed.”

“Very grateful for that, ta.”  

“That’s not right.” She shakes her head and tries to order the messy chronology of her life. She’s never had to do that before, has only ever had to remember how to kill, how to evade, how to follow orders. Muscle memory and the secure knowledge of an assassin. Has never been able to remember anything beyond the moment when she last woke, has never needed to remember anything else. Weapons don’t need memories like that.  

He watches her without a word, but his taut body and stormy eyes betray how... she’s isn’t sure what emotion to attribute to them. Not anger, not at her anyway. Concern? That sounds right.

She focuses inward. The ship was the last place she woke up. She knows that. And before that, right before that, there was the street in London.

“The street was first and then the ship.” He nods confirmation as she strains to remember the interim. “And… pain between that.” He frowns, but she isn’t paying attention to him anymore. Her attention is consumed by her own disorderly mind.

It was the chair. The chair with its terrible – and her mind shies away from that concealed memory, doesn’t want to go in a thirty-mile radius of those memories (more than once? yes, many times, so many and they all hurt so much and why the hell is she thinking about this, she needs to stop _right now_ ).

“What pain, Rose?”

She jumps at that name (it feels like hers and it doesn’t feel like hers but whatever the feeling, she has no right to it) and shakes her head. “Don’t.”

It looks as if he’s about to protest, his mouth drops open and flounders, but finally he sighs and asks again, “What pain?”

“After I failed, they put me in the chair. It was – “ And again, her mind skitters away and she can’t remember what it was except that it hurt like hell. Then the sweet relief of oblivion. “I can’t remember.”

“Hey, it’s okay.” He gives her a small smile meant to reassure and she sees it a thousand times reflected in her memories. She blinks the sensation away and focuses on the him that’s here right now.

He’s started to babble about neural interface systems and suppression in the amygdala and lots of other words that she quickly loses track of. It doesn’t matter; he’s talking to himself more than her in this moment, clearly trying to work it out.

She focuses instead on finishing her tea and nibbling on a chocolate biscuit, which is probably, scratch that, _definitely_ the best thing she’s ever tasted, and simply listening to the smooth cadence of his voice. Her mind stirs, rustling with hidden memories, but it’s not stressful and overwhelming like before. Her muscles relax and she sinks into the chair.

His babble is tapering off and her tea’s nearly gone and the biscuit’s already gone though she’s started on a second one when she finally decides to ask. “Who were they?”

He pauses and tilts his head. “You don’t know?”

She shakes her head. They’d been her masters and that was the end of her knowledge. Everything else was unnecessary.

“The Mesei. Creating chaos is their prime directive.” His face tightens. “They select planets to prey on and start killing. World leaders, celebrity figures, schools – whatever will garner the most attention. While everyone’s running around, they take whatever they want and then blow it up before moving on to the next one. Not very big on negotiating either.”

His face is strained, eyes far away, and her hand twitches. She wants to offer comfort but she doesn’t know how or exactly why, just that he’s hurting (eyes like storms and the weight of thousands of lives and her hand in his – but she was that agent for chaos, she didn’t really _know_ it but her hands are dripping red and she can’t do anything – but he looks so _sad_ ). Biting her lip, she’s about to reach across the table and take his hand when he jumps up. Her hand drops, useless.

“Right then.” It’s disorienting how quickly he’s shifted moods but his mercurial nature fits right into place in her head. “I need to do a brain scan. C’mon. Then we can get everything else settled.” He grins but it’s too wide.

She doesn’t call him on it, just follows him out.    

\--

It turns out there’s a lot of machinery involved in doing a brain scan and she almost bolts out of the room when he attaches electrodes to her head.

“I’m sorry, but it’s necessary.” He gives her another of those small smiles that seem to have become second nature between them now. “I promise it won’t hurt.”

She nods. Her body still wants to move, but deeper in her mind, she knows he’ll keep his promise. That he would never hurt her. She focuses her eyes on the sterile, white counters behind him and tries to ignore the machinery around her. It doesn’t help so she closes her eyes. The chair and her overlooking guards rise unbidden in her mind and she shivers.

“How long have I been away?”

The Doctor stills beside her and she opens her eyes. His face is tired and sad and she feels that compulsion to reach for his hand again. She doesn’t. After a moment, he admits, “Four years.”

Four years. Four fucking years. It doesn’t feel that long but it also feels like forever, like all she’s ever done is wake up and kill and sit in that damn chair, rinse and repeat a thousand times. No time and all time.

“Oh.”

He nods, face blank and distant, and continues his procedure. Once he’s finished hooking everything up, he tells her to lie down and the machine closes around her. There’s a whirring sound and her body tenses in preparation for pain that never comes (any second and it’ll tear through her and it’ll feel like her entire body is burning away and her mind _will_ burn away). There’s nothing really, not even a ticklish sensation, and she just lies there, completely still like he told her, tense in expectation, as the machine whirs away. Then it’s done and the thing opens and he’s watching her with guarded eyes.

“I’m sorry.” He admits, eyes briefly dropping to the floor.

She blinks, _for what_ nearly coming from her mouth before catching herself. Instead she shrugs. “It’s okay.”

He nods but she sees the tenseness in his body and knows it’s anything but okay.

\--

The Doctor leads her through the corridors and it’s impossible to keep track of where they’re going, too many lefts and rights and zigzags so for a panicked moment she thinks _there’s no way I could escape_ , and then they stop at a door and she remembers she doesn’t have to. Probably.

“Well,” he waves his hands and then pats the door, “this is it. Your room.”

She nods.

After a beat when neither of them moves, the Doctor opens the door for her. “You can rest here.”

She steps in slowly, taking everything in and trying to remember walking through this door before (if she has any sense of recollection, it slides away before she can examine it any closer).

Her room.

This is her room.

There are clothes scattered across the floor. The bed is unmade, blankets crumbled as if their occupant had just woken up. Magazines clutter the nightstand alongside a well-loved copy of _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_ (snow and ghosts who weren’t real ghosts and _I’m glad I met you_ ). Over in the corner, there’s a vanity table with an assortment of make-up on the top. And all over there are small knickknacks and photographs. Her eyes don’t linger on the photographs; instead they skip away like they’re not meant for her eyes.

She takes a few cautious steps into the room. It’s a lot like entering a crypt – or maybe a time capsule is a better metaphor because after all, _she_ isn’t dead. Not technically anyway.

“Do you need anything else?” The Doctor’s voice rouses her from her reverie.

“No.” She replies. “Night Doctor.”

“Good night.”

He shuts the door with a quiet click.

\--

When she enters the bathroom to wash up, her eyes meet another pair of eyes. Her body slides easily into an attack stance, legs out, center low, arms up, but then she realizes it’s a mirror and those eyes, they must be hers. It’s almost funny (except where none of this is).

She walks up to the mirror and stares. Really stares. Her eyes are cold, her skin pale and stretched over her face. Her hair lies flat and oily and tangled. And when she strips down to stare at her body, the rest of her is just as unfamiliar. Scars from close encounters she can’t remember anymore litter her body. She traces a thin long scar across her stomach and feels a flicker of ghostly pain, a knife slicing through leather and skin and then her gun going off and blowing the man’s head open. Her hand drops and she turns away.

The water is hot when she turns it on and she hums appreciatively as it batters her skin. Her eyes close and she simply stands there feeling the water pound into her. Eventually her eyes open and she stares at the bottles (soap first and shampoo and conditioner after and scrubbing purple slime off her skin – what? she’s not covered in slime, just layers of sweat and dirt and oils – when was the last time she took a proper shower?).

Once she’s finished, she dries off and turns to pick up her leather armor. But there’s a tank and shorts waiting for her instead, no armor in sight. She stands, dripping, naked, and stares. Something (anger? it feels like anger, like when she missed but not as volcanic, more of a fizzling sort of fury and irritation) bubbles up and, just as quickly, passes.

She does not need her armor here (but she wishes she had it anyway).

Because there’s nothing else to do and she isn’t one to complain, she pulls on the shorts and the tank top and walks back out. She doesn’t stop to look at anything in the room (her room), just collapses in the bed (her bed – she has to get the hang of these possessives, of owning something that won’t kill) and curls up under the covers.

She thinks it’ll take a while to go to sleep – she’s always fallen asleep to the soothing ( _searing, burning, erasing_ ) sensation of the chair and never on her own – but she passes out the moment her head hits the pillows.

\--

_She’s on a red bike pumping the pedals like nothing else matters. There’s a slight wobble to the bike, but she’s doing it, she’s actually riding a bicycle, no training wheels and all. A grin cracks her face and she speeds up. This is it, this is what being invincible feels like, as if nothing could topple her because she is on top of the world –_

_“Rose!”_

_And then the front wheel catches and she’s bucked forward. Her eyes slip shut, preparing herself for the slap of asphalt, but she keeps falling and falling and there is no asphalt, there is nothing, she is falling into the abyss again. The void has always been a comfort before, but now it is terrifying, now it is clawing at her and she wants to scream but nothing comes from her mouth._

_“And the lost girl, so far away from home. The valiant child, who will die in battle so very soon.”_

_Her eyes shoot open, but she doesn’t see the voice’s owner. In fact, the vertigo is gone and she’s not falling. Arms wrap around her and she can hear the double-tap of blood pumping right by her ear and it sounds like safety. She tries to crane her neck, but his face is shadowy and indistinct, almost shifting in every moment._

_“Doctor?” Her mouth forms his name, but nothing comes out and right before her eyes, he changes again._

_“You killed them all.” He says, but it’s not his voice – it’s colder and harsher like the snarl of bending metal in a car crash. “You_ killed _them. How many?”_

_She doesn’t know, she doesn’t even know how many times she woke up, but suddenly there are faces all around her. She is alone again, without his arms, and it’s just those faces. They’re stretched like macabre masks and they’re screaming._

_Everything fades to a golden glow but she can still hear all the voices screaming and screaming and –_

Her eyes shoot open. Her mouth is half open in a scream of her own, but the room is silent save for the ship’s humming. She reaches for the gun at her belt and touches elastic waistband instead.

Oh right.

She’d forfeited the weapons along with her armor (that wasn’t bad, that was the right thing to do, but she _wants_ their comforting presence now).

She scoots up on the bed and tucks her knees to her chest, arms wrapping around herself. She is alone, but the faces from her dream are etched into her eyes. Their mouths are frozen mid-scream and they are either unaware that she is about to kill them or else twisted in pure terror. She’s never felt as vulnerable as she does now, with only her whirling thoughts to keep her company.

The ship’s humming increases (she’s alive, the ship is alive, and it’s in her head – not in a bad way, not like the Mesei and the chair, but like a warm blanket). Her eyes sweep across the room and settle on a photograph sitting on the nightstand.

For a moment, she simply stares at it, nibbling at her lip (it’s _hers_ but it’s also not hers but she has a right to it). She grabs it because she has no weapons, nothing else to hold, and stares.

The Doctor is beaming (and there’s a warm feeling in her chest, warm and bubbly and _pleasant_ ), smiling like she’s never seen before. And next to him, there’s a blonde woman with a matching grin. It takes her a moment to realize that’s Rose Tyler.

That’s _her_.

Her eyes narrow and she squints at the smiling woman. Her eyes are bright and her skin is healthy and her hair is lush and her face is not worn out and tired. More than anything, she looks happy and invincible. Nothing like in the mirror.

Her stomach clenches and she looks away from the woman’s face to the Doctor’s . Not that there’s much room between them; their faces are nearly touching, close together like they’d been caught in some inner joke the rest of the universe isn’t privy to (it was the prime minister of Ka’lai who’d turned orange when they traipsed in not wearing enough – the Doctor had forgotten to tell her that everyone needed to be wearing hats when speaking to government officials, the more ridiculous the more respectful – and they’d run off laughing and red-faced and – no, she can’t lose that moment, she needs to remember).

She feels both intrusive, as if she shouldn’t be looking at this intimate photo, and secure, as if it truly belongs to her; she isn’t sure which feeling is stronger. With the utmost care, she traces the smiles on their faces, the crinkles around his eyes, the lines of their happiness.

She wants that. ( _She had that_.) She wants it more than anything.


End file.
